Fortran and Pascal Paper
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Learning Team Project
Language comparison of FORTRAN and Pascal
By: Peter Ryan
Richard Zultak
Brendt Lozen
University Of Phoenix
Dan Cohen
POS370
Programming Concepts
Sep 12th 2007
Abstract
The following is a research paper regarding two programming languages called FORTRAN and Pascal.
Pascal [mathematician/philosopher Blaise Pascal] was designed primarily as a tool for teaching good programming skills, but – thanks largely to the availability of Borlands inexpensive Pascal compiler for the early IBM PC – it has become popular outside of the classroom. Unlike many languages, Pascal requires a fairly structured approach, which prevents the kinds of indecipherable “spaghetti code” and easily-overlooked mistakes that plague programmers using languages such as Fortran or C. Free and commercial tools are available from various sources for DOS, Windows, Mac, OS/2, AmigaOS, and Unix-like systems. The web site editor BBEdit is written in Pascal.
Fortran [“FORmula TRANslation”] is the oldest language still in general use, dating back to 1957, the year the Space Age began. It excels at the first task computers were called on for: number-crunching. This is the language that literally put a man on the moon, and some of the features it developed in the process of that project (and other less glamorous ones) have yet to be duplicated in other, more “modern” languages.
Table of contents
Language history and origin
FORTRAN: pg. 4
Pascal: pg. 6
Language generation
FORTRAN: pg. 4
Pascal: pg. 6
The language structure
FORTRAN: pg. 4
Pascal: pg. 6
Language syntax, reading, writing, conditional decision making, Sub-routines and functions.
FORTRAN: pg. 5
Pascal: pg. 7
Describe the languages
FORTRAN: pg. 6
Pascal: pg. 7
References: pg. 8
FORTRAN is a programming language developed in the early 1950ÐŽ¦s. The name was produced from two words FORmula TRANslation. This is where the word FORTRAN came from. Over the evolution of FORTRANS versions have been upgraded and enhanced throughout its development. A revision of FOTRAN IV led to FORTRAN 77, there were many different versions, but the latest one is underway called FORTRAN 2008. This new version is much like FORTRAN 2003 with more capabilities and a few corrections incorporated like Co-array and BIT data type. This language was mainly designed for scientists and engineers that use FORTRAN as a big part in their field. For the past thirty years FORTRAN has helped to create bridges, aero plane structures, factory automation controls, storm drainage designs, and analysis of scientific data used by civil engineers today. The main tasks FORTRAN is a part of that are useful today are weather, and climate modeling, computational fluid dynamics, chemistry, stimulations of long-term solar system dynamics, satellite orbits, and simulation of automobile crashes.
As one of the oldest programming languages, the FORTRAN was developed by a team of programmers at IBM led by John Backus; it was designed to allow easy translation of math formulas into code. The language was often referred to as a scientific language, and it produced the first successful high-level language, using the first compiler ever developed in 1957. This was a good thing for programmers due to the reason that they needed to compile high-level code that was comparable to hand-coded assembly language used at that time. The object during its design was to create a programming language that would be easy to learn, suitable for a wide variety of applications, machine independent friendly, and would allow mathematical expressions to be made. FORTRAN was excellent because of itÐŽ¦s easy to read codes used by many electrical engineers. The execution efficiency created faster programs allowing programmers to focus more on the problem solving aspects and less on the coding. FORTRAN has been used all throughout history, for example this program was used to put a man on the moon. At the time of its creation (1957) this programming language was a giant leap forward in programming and technology.
Here are some basic language syntax statements in FORTRAN.
1. * cmplxd.f (FORTRAN 77)
2. * Demonstration of COMPLEX numbers
3. * Prints the values of e ** (j * i * pi / 4) for i = 0, 1, 2, , 7
4. * where j is the imaginary number sqrt(-1)
5. PROGRAM CMPLXD
6. IMPLICIT COMPLEX(X)
7. PARAMETER (PI = 3.141592653589793, XJ = (0, 1))
8. DO 1, I = 0, 7
9. X = EXP(XJ * I * PI / 4)